Performance -
With audio gear it is hard to be objective. After all different people like different music and even people that like the same music might like to listen to it in different ways. To make sure that I cover the audio products that we get here at DecryptedTech I like to have more than one opinion. Usually I gather 5 other people to listen to different audio types (gaming, movies, MP3 and CD-Audio). I then ask for a rating of one to five with one being the worst and 5 being the best for each category. As an added item I also ask for a single word to describe the audio quality. I then follow up with my personal feelings and observations. The HOM Redemption Song headphones are meant more for music reproduction. We also wanted to try them out in our other environments so we will cover them hear, but will focus on their performance with music and in particular digital music.
Music (MP3 and CD-Audio)
For Music I have a few favorite tracks that I like to use. These are not always other people’s favorites but they serve as a baseline and have some impressive audio features to them that can distinguish between good audio and bad. One of them is Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. It is an amazing track. Others are A Day in the Life by the Beetles, Are you Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, and Cage the Elephant’s Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked. To this listing we added some jazz, funk, and of course Reggae. The numbers for this along with their corresponding one word comments are below.
Our take -
For MP3 audio on our Zune and through the Xonar Xense the quality was top notch. The bass had a little bit of mud in it, but for the most part there was clean separation between lows, mids and highs at most volume levels. The Sonuz are not as crisp as the House of Marley, Sirus or the Xense Sennheiser PC350 set. We also noticed that the Sonuz needed a little more volume to convey the same “force” in the audio; which lead to a little distortion at higher levels. It was something that we did not see with the House of Marley, Xense or Sirus headphones. It was still very good audio, but we have heard better in particular the cover of Little Wing was interesting as we could still hear the buzz of the amp, but other sounds that make the track personal were conspicuously missing. The stereo separation was very good showing this very clearly during the song Aint no Rest for the Wicked here we heard something new that we have missed, the lead singers voice cracks quite a bit (not in an unpleasant way, but in a way that adds to the song), also the bass was a little more muddy and did not have the same live feeling that we like to hear. Overall the audio experience with MP3s was good, but there is some mud in the low end depending on your choice of music. We saw this in our Jazz, Reggae, Funk and even some of our more mainstream selections.
Gaming -
So for this test we did something a little different. As we have mentioned (and you can see from the box) these are meant for portable personal media players like the iPhone, iPad iPod and even other tablets. We decided that in addition to our normal gaming tests with a few choice PC games we would also throw in a couple of games on our Galaxy Nexus just to see how good the audio reproduction is there.
Some of the word use here were; Wow, Nice, and Strong.
Our take -
Gaming is what the Sonuz are meant for. The whopping 32mm drivers make sounds in your game jump out at you. While playing Crysis 2 with these we really got a good appreciation for them by the way the explosions and gun shots sounded. There was the subsonic “thump” from the shots followed by the higher pitched “crack” and the lingering slight echo that a round being fired has. We had the same experience with the rest of the in-game sounds which, as we have said, help to make games much more immersive. For mobile gaming the Sonuz added a little to the experience, but were honestly too cumbersome for regular use. Your experience is also going to depend heavily on the audio codec that is in your Phone. Samsung chose to put in a higher-quality audio CODEC than what we found in the iPhone or iPad so we were getting much cleaner audio than what we saw with the Nexus. In general the Sonuz excel when connected to a PC for gaming and if your audio card has a headphone amplifier then the sound is just that much better.
Movies/Video -
Movies was an easy one also, I have several Blu-ray titles that are great for this including Pirates of the Caribbean. So I loaded up this title and then dropped in a couple of other movies that have good surround effects. The numbers and words are shown below.
Our take -
The Sonuz also showed itself capable when it came to watching movies and videos. Here the 53mm driver came in handy to help push the audio from the system to your ears. Here we found that the mud from the lower end gave a little bit of life to the audio. In real life it is rare that you hear the sounds around you in clear and separated tones. Instead there is a mixing of frequencies and muddling of tones. This provided a great movie experience as the background noised blended in, but were also separate in an oddly distinct manner. A good example of this is in the movie Lord of War, although the sounds in the weapons expo are blended into background clutter you can still hear some separation in them which is how you would experience it in real life. It was a nice effect.
Comfort -
The Sonuz are a little heavy and as such can get uncomfortable after wearing them for a long period of time. We also found that the cloth of the ear pads did cause our ears to sweat after about an hour of use. This was a little disappointing as we would have expected more from Cooler Master and what is obviously a gaming headset. We also found that the pad in the head strap felt a little odd due to its placement, we continually wanted to adjust it because it felt strange at the back of our head. Others that used the headset also mentioned the same problems with their ears and the positioning of the headset. The issue was not so bad that people said they would not use the headset still it is something to keep in mind.
